Night Spirit
by LithiumDoll
Summary: “Sit with me,” Mana rasped, and patted the bar stool beside her. “Bring the bottle and another glass, and sit with me. Sit with babulya and she’ll tell you a fairy tale.”


The bar was usually empty on the nights Tarasov's American came to check the ledgers; open, but empty. It had annoyed Alexei once: the lack of tips, being expected to pretend the nameless hole in the wall was anything more than a front. A few months later, he didn't mind so much. It was a quiet time to study. A warm place to listen to the game when equations began to spin.

No one bothered him.

Much.

"Sit with me," Mana rasped, and patted the bar stool beside her. "Bring the bottle and another glass, and sit with me. Sit with babulya and she'll tell you a fairy tale."

"I'm not a child," Alexei said, then snorted at the incongruity. "And you are no-one's grandmother." But it was ledger night, he reasoned - only two customers, and the American, in the booth at the back, scowling in concentration as he checked the books.

Alexei poured a generous shot into the greasy glass she gripped so hard in a shaking hand. "No time for stories, though," he teased, and gestured into dark, empty corners. "We're busy, you see the customers?"

Old Mana, they called her, though she'd never offered her age or her name. Maybe fifty, maybe eighty. A contradiction of threadbare pin-stripe suit and glittering trinkets at her wrists and ears and throat. It wasn't costume jewelry that decorated her fingers, though, Alexei was sure of that.

Heavy, tarnished gold rings, with dulled red and green stones set in intricate patterns. Lean Hen said Mana had melted coins; Vittoria declared that they were just good fakes. Privately, Alexei was sure they could buy this dive seven times over, if Viggo ever wanted to sell.

He was struck by the guilty thought that perhaps she was someone's mother. Grandmother. But she didn't correct his assumption, only cast a jaundiced eye at the empty bar stools surrounding her.

"Customers? Hah." She shook her head and threw back the shot of vodka. "Ghosts, already haunting the place they came to die."

"Hey," Lean Hen grumbled from the corner, but without heat; only a week since she had stumbled in and claimed her place, and they were already used to her ways. Mana was harmless and good enough company, when she wasn't too far into her drink.

"Babai," she whispered thickly. "The night spirit."

"Babai comes at night," Alexei monotoned, not bothering to hide his lack of interest. "He steals bad children: the ones who won't sleep."

Or don't eat their vegetables, or talk too loudly. Or talk at all. Or breathe. Or dodge. Whatever it was his aunt had raged about that day. Alexei didn't think about her much, not anymore.

"No, umnyashka. Oh no." Mana's acid smirk cut through the uncoiling memory. "Some delinquent child stuffed in a bag? Whose great loss is that?" Mana swayed forward, unblinking, the sheen on her browning teeth glinting in the thin, yellow light. "Babai wakes the children. And then, in the end, they steal themselves."

She leaned back, mouth twisting with resentment. "He whispers to them and they whisper to each other. They don't mind their mothers; they forget who they are. They follow him, one by one, until…"

The door chimed in her silence as Lean took his leave, back to whatever warm, bright alley the Bowery King had granted him.

"Until what?" Alexei asked, despite himself, when she didn't go on.

"Until the music has no one left to dance with." Old Mana shrugged. "And, when his bag is full, when there is nothing left to take - when the dawn comes - he is gone."

Alexei studied her. "You sound sad," he said at last. But she didn't, not exactly. Not quite wistful either. Something hungrier; something close enough.

"Do I?" She stared into her empty glass. "Yes, perhaps. The boogeyman is dreadful, but he's beautiful too, in his way. Like blood, shining on white marble. Babai and Babaika," she crooned. "Blade so sharp, cut so deep, come the day, no promise to keep."

The American raised his head, brow furrowed and pen paused over the ledger. "What did she just say?"

"She's drunk," Alexei tried, the hair on the back of his neck raising at the tight intensity in the man's tone. "Rambling. Don't listen to her. She tells stories for children."

"The Demyanova Family were interred in their home last week. All of them, all their staff, all their security."

Alexei nodded; he remembered. The bar had been busy that night, with no faces he had seen before or expected to see again. All blanched and pinched, and breathless with fear. No one had been interested in a barman, only the triple-locked panic room hidden behind the false wall in the men's restroom.

"Twenty-four bodies, one murder weapon. A dinner knife. A fucking dinner knife."

That, Alexei hadn't heard.

The American stood and strode forward as he went on. "There was so much blood, it stained the marble hallway fucking pink. Just like she said. So what the fuck does she know?" He landed a hand on Mana's shoulder and pushed his face into hers, close enough his breath reddened her skin. "Who the hell are you, Grandma?"

Old Mana laughed, deep in her throat. "Just another ghost."

The American snapped his fingers in front of her face. "What do you know about — what did you say? Baba Yaga?"

Mana laughed again, sharp with contempt. "Baba Yaga ? The witch of the forest. The snake? P'ft. Run away on your little chicken legs, with your sisters."

"You better start making sense real fast," the American said, fingers curling into a frustrated fist.

Old Mana's shoulders tensed; straightened. "Too late for sense," she said, the last of the vodka slur gone. "The night has come and there are no good children here. Except one."

The street door opened, but Alexei couldn't turn to look, caught by the chillingly sober gleam in her eye. A warm, dry hand covered his, heavy with golden rings. "Run," Mana said. "Hop home now, zaychik. Hop, hop, hop."

Alexei stumbled back against the back counter, the cash register bruising his arm - again. The familiar jab of annoyance brought focus and he turned to see a tall, slim man, probably no older than Alexei himself, but in an expensive, well-tailored black suit. His hair, growing out the remnants of a buzz cut, was just as dark, and his eyes were shadowed pits. He walked - prowled, stalked - to the bar.

His hands hung loosely at his sides.

He wasn't holding a bag.

He wasn't holding anything at all.

Alexei swallowed when the man's gaze fell on him; passed over.

Fell on Mana.

Alexei let the American, still muttering about Baba Yaga, yank him around the counter and towards the restrooms. He saw Mana stand, though. More graceful now than any night since she'd appeared - graceful as a dancer. Her hand dropped and something other than gold and rubies flashed between her fingers.

"Nearly," Old Mana said. "Almost."

"No," Babai said. "Never."


End file.
